Older Child, Older Children Adoption - Adopting Some Really Good Older Children

03/11/08

Adopting Some Really Good Older Children

Posted by : Cindy Bodie in Older Child Adoption Blog at 04:42 pm , 365 words, 2801 views
Categories: Adoptive Families

While plowing through the mountain of housework each day or driving to the umpteenth therapist appointment, I’m often thinking about the other blogs here at adoption.com or the comments I receive or the emails with questions I can’t often answer. The lack of logic in the world of the older adopted child is mind-boggling yet understandable.

If my very underpinnings, if any semblance of security or stability had constantly been knocked out from under me, I doubt I’d be able to make a complete sentence at all.

A social worker wrote this post today and I’ve been thinking about its clarity and insight. She used the term ‘the arrogance of a privileged youth,’ in talking about her own upbringing and I see myself reflected in her words.

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I had no clue when I first started adopting children, no idea as to the depths of pain within their souls, no comprehension of their loss; somehow I ignorantly or arrogantly thought that love would fix their hurts.

With some of my children this has almost been so. I have a 13 year old with a sunny disposition, a great attitude and she’s only lived within our family for three years, the oldest in her sibling group and she was glad to turn over the parenting duties to me. So parentified was she that her siblings called her Memaw, a nickname that has stuck.

She’s such a sweetheart that her original caseworker called me today about another older sibling group that’s ready for adoption, comparing the 14 year old in that group to our Memaw as a manner of demonstrating how darling this young girl is who waits for a family.

This sibling group, Hispanic and ages 10-14 generally and statistically face an uphill chance of being adopted. I’m concentrating hard on finding them a family, hurting inwardly at the thought of my four kids not having found a family, glad that we were chosen to be their family.

A local adoption worker here thinks she has an approved family that will adopt these four older children and that thought alone will make me sleep better tonight.

Photo Credit Cindy Bodie 2007

1 comment

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Comment from: condo-mom [Member]

I'm laughing about the conflicting info I'm getting online, at this blog, and other places, re. sibling group adoption. I read that one upside of adopting sibs is that they are not so likely to have full-blown RAD -- they at least care about one another. Then I read of siblings groups who sincerely don't seem to care about each other at all, where much of the family's day is spent keeping them separated.

I read about sib groups where one or more are the parentified kids, and are happy to give up that role and regain some of their childhoods (like your Memaw), and about other groups where younger sibs are not given permission to trust or attach to new parents because of an older sib's lockhold on that role.

I read about the sadness of some parents as they realize they have less than half the "standard" 18 years to raise and influence their older children, and then about how there is truly nothing magical about age 18, and the kids could be around until 28 or 38, or until they all settle in and build a village around you.

So I guess it's the nature of adoption -- it has so many faces, so many possible outcomes, all one can do is share one's own experience and hope it helps someone else. Thank you -- we have begun praying and talking about our future sibling group !! -- Rachel

Permalink 03/11/08 @ 17:19